Plasma Active - a New Approach to Tablet Computing

Share, Like, Connect

Another new feature in Plasma Active is the presence of Share,
Like and Connect buttons in the top panel. These make it easy to
share content instantly, such as images, to social networks or on-line
storage; "like" things on either social networks or locally (for
example,
bookmarking a page); and connect things together, such as linking a
document or a page to the current Activity so that it always will be
readily available in the future. This way, if you want quick access to an
image, just click the Connect icon to add it as a widget on the desktop
of the present Activity.

Figure 7. You easily can associate a file or Web page
with an Activity by using the Connect button.

Open for Business

Plasma Active has been unusual among KDE projects due to the heavy
involvement of companies from the start. Among these, basysKom has
employed developers to work on Contour, the combination of Activities and
Recommendations at the center of the user experience. Marco states that
"everyone from the community is welcome to join and contribute, just
like any other KDE project—companies are members of the community as
well and are helping in many tasks (also the less fun ones in order to
give to it the level of quality needed for an actual product)". Companies
also are making it easy to try Plasma Active, with live images provided
by basysKom and open-slx (see the Try Plasma Active Two sidebar).

Life after MeeGo

In the past, a large part of KDE's focus in the mobile space has been
on MeeGo-powered devices, particularly those created by Nokia. However,
the decision of Nokia to use Windows as the base for its smartphones
and Intel's subsequent dropping of MeeGo in favor of its collaboration
with Samsung, Tizen, has changed things. These changes do not, however,
unduly concern the KDE developers. Aaron points out that "Plasma Active
is not welded to any one OS and is highly portable", and indeed, there are
"images with OpenSUSE, MeeGo and Mer kernels and userlands beneath the
Plasma Active UI".

ARM devices running Android have proven to be very popular, and Plasma Active
also is targeting some of this hardware, with an ARM-ready image already
available built on software from the Mer Project. But what about Android
itself? It is not presently the most appealing alternative for Marco,
who argues that "Android, while released with an open-source license is
tightly controlled by Google and doesn't leave much room for a developer
community to grow and contribute". He does, however, acknowledge that
Android "is a good platform indeed and we don't exclude some integration
work with it in the future".

There also are possibilities of Plasma Active or related technologies
targeting much more than just tablets. Aaron notes that already "some
are running it on handset-style devices", but that "the current user
experience has been designed with a tablet in mind". He plans,
however, to
start working on "interfaces that are designed specifically for other
form factors, such as set-top boxes and handsets in the future". A key
enabler for this is Plasma's design: "Plasma allows for multiple, and
highly diverse, user interfaces without starting from scratch. Plasma
Desktop, Netbook and now Active for tablets showcases this very nicely:
they are all very different on the surface from each other, but share
nearly all the implementation code beneath."

The Future of Plasma Active

Plasma Active is still young software. Plasma Active Two was released
shortly before this article was written and is the version discussed
here. Plasma Active Three is expected in summer 2012 and "will
be focusing on new major feature and application introductions",
according to Aaron. From a purely end-user perspective, the limited
number of touch-friendly applications means Plasma Active is not ready
yet. Nonetheless, it is well worth trying out and could become compelling
by the time of its third release later this year. It already feels more
polished and complete than any of the MeeGo tablet pre-releases.

There are other reasons to get excited about Plasma Active. For Marco,
the motivation for starting work on Plasma Active had "different reasons,
both purely technological and social ones". The social ones are perhaps
best summed up by Aaron: "right now, there is too much focus on created
devices that serve the owner of the application store and focus on
consumption of new devices just for the sake of the newness of the
device", something he believes has "largely stalled
progress".

Aaron sees a different future for Plasma Active and those who choose
to contribute to or use the software: "We should be looking at how to
support people's lives and in doing so make them better. This needs to be
done in a socially responsible manner, which means free and open-source
software as well as open processes must drive the development. This is
the point and purpose of Plasma Active."

Comment viewing options

We also have MsAccess97 around for one of those reasons. That reason is older webapps and older databases. Many companies don't want to pour resources (read money) into auto tools updating the software. While I understand having had to support such apps in the past, the risks with not upgrading are far more expensive. How many companies have policies, procedures, and filtering software setup explicitly to protect their computers from malware that affects IE7 but not newer browsers?

Usually, neti pot amoeba is not a big problem if it is present in tap water and you drink it. The problem might occur when it somehow manages to get up into your nostrils. This quite rare infection typically occurs when people swim or dive in warm freshwater rivers and lakes.

I was just surfing through the web and found this amazing strip bar girls app.
I will really recommend it to all the folks out there.
Excellent tech and great quality girls dancing for you on your desktop whenever you say so.
Take a look guys. You won't believe your eyes.

Plasma Active appears to be a solution to an issue I've been faced with. I'm currently in flight school. I been looking for a way to use my flight simulator training software on a big screen. This is awesome!

I have been looking at tablets for a while now, but I haven't been happy with the offerings from Apple or Android. I am thinking of getting an Archos 101 9G just to load Plasma Active. It looks beautiful and I am now using Activities on my Desktop after reading this.

I have to say, I've been reading a bunch of KDE haters on these Plasma Active sites and I have to say, Where's the Gnome offering?

I have read many articles on various graphic user interfaces used on tablets, but my question is simple - how do you actually install on the tablet. I have tried running ubuntu from an image on an android tablet on top of the android, and vncviewer to access it, but I would like to install a complete arm os on the device. Any help would be appreciated, I keep on drawing at straws and losing.

I own an hp touchsmart tm2 tblet laptop which has a nice touch screen and did test this thing. Despite the buggy behaviour of the underlining os for which the kde community is not accountable, I found the concept and everything unintuitive and ended with a panefull skin of my pointing finger due to repeatedly have to pull down the applications's screen. Closing our ecpanding windows were a pane too, and I had to use the stylus. Moreover, the very small default character and icon sise seemed to have been chosen by peopel suffering from hypermyopia. By the same time I tested the x86 android 4.x and everything went smoothly, regarding the interface.

I, like many others, was confused about activities until one day I sat down and figured it out. Now, i can't do without it.

I have an activity for my weather with browser window showing local doppler radar and hurricane tracking site since this is Florida along with the 7 day forcast.

Another activity is for my flightgear flight sim where I have 3 sections of the screen.

One window has fgrun to start the sim and one has blender where I create objects for it and konqueror for copy files after creation and also use as web browser if i need FG related materials.

If i were a programmer, i would have my editor, terminal to compile, file manager etc. that i would need to code.

The good thing is that as you start and stop activities, you don't have to waste time for the applications to start, it is all there ready for you. And you can have a large amount of activites defined.

I really mean it. I don't like KDE but Plasma Active seriously is repelling in more then just one way. If I'd see someone I know using it... I don't know, it'll be like catching someone pick nose and eat what came out but worse.

Oh please, when were you born? In the days when people were bigger than their operating systems, they generally chose to organize their work and play in directories. Remember those, in good ole Unix or (gasp) MSDOS? Everything to do with an project (or Activity if you insist) went in one folder. Documents, to-do lists, data, pictures, code, everything in one place where you needed it. It was powerful and simple. As long an application (we called them "programs" then) was on your path, you could invoke it to work on the files right there in your working directory. The minute I saw Windows I knew it was WRONG. Suddenly the focus of activity was no longer the directory. Everything now revolved around the application. The application captures your attention and tries to keep you in its ambit, like shops and malls do. And because the application has no idea where other stuff relevant to the project is, it puts its files in default places, such as folders called "My Documents". I have been endlessly mystified how people could put up for so many years with such a naff idea. It makes no sense to put all data from one application in one folder, ignoring the actual contents of the data. It's like having a dinner party with all chairs in one room, all the tables in another, all the food in the basement, and all the drinks in the atic. Now, with much fanfare, KDE has discovered that it make a lot of sense to organize things around... Activities! Sorry if I'm not quite overwhelmed.

When I first heard about it, I did not think about it as software discrimination and am glad I had the opportunity to consider that perspective. But like most of the feedback in the comments here, I disagree with Mr. Ryan.

I must say that KDE Plasma Active is the only tablet interface that I actually like visually and even more so functionally (at least from what I could see from some videos and descriptions of it). I really hope more tablets with it will be vaialable in future. It would especially be awesome if Linux friendly hardware companies like System76 and ZaReason could help make it a success.